Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory and Meaning
Love and Vulnerability
Freedom
Art, Creativity, and Expression
Wonder and Knowledge
Summary
Analysis
Paris, France. July 29, 1715. Addie is still a “dreamer,” but she’s “sharper” now. She hands her client a bottle of wine and orders him to pour them drinks. The man pours one glass for Addie and one glass for himself. He gulps down the wine and starts to undress her. She asks him why he’s in such a hurry; he rented the room for the night, after all. But it’s not long until the drug Addie slipped into the wine renders her client unconscious. The man groans and falls to the floor. Addie removes her dress and lies down, grateful to have the bed to herself.
The reader should take note of the exact date: July 29, exactly one year after Addie made her deal with the darkness. Will this date continue to be significant for Addie, in terms of her curse and relationship with the darkness? Also note how Addie has gained wisdom and experience since her first, traumatic experience with sex work nearly a year ago: she’s learned how to swindle her clients and get the most out of them for the least amount of effort on her part. Once more, Addie makes the best of a dire situation to take advantage of her enchanted freedom, even if the cards might once have seemed stacked against her.
Themes
Addie removes the bottle of laudanum she’s kept concealed beneath her skirts. It’s been a year since Addie ran away from her own life, and she’s learned many rules about the new world she inhabits. For instance, she can’t drug anyone’s drink herself, but she can mix the medicine into the wine and let people pour a glass and drug themselves.
That Addie’s curse allowed her to coerce her client into poisoning himself—but not do the deed herself—further plays up the independence and solitude that characterizes her new, invisible life. Everything Addie—and the people she interacts with—does must be done independently, not as a group effort. This further develops the novel’s central theme of human connection as one cost of freedom.
Themes
“How disappointing,” calls a voice from behind Addie: it’s the darkness disguised as her stranger. “Hello, Adeline,” he says, and Addie shudders at this name she longs to leave in the past. Addie is furious. How could the darkness leave her alone to suffer? He explains that he heard Addie’s cries. He also reminds her that he gave her exactly what she wanted: freedom. Addie insists that he twisted her words, but the stranger says she’s in this mess because of her own foolishness—not because of his deception. The stranger moves toward Addie and moves his hand up her arm. Addie wills herself to stay still, but the stranger is frightening. He’s not even human—his face is simply a mask that hides his monstrosity.
It’s a clear power play for the stranger to continue to call Addie by “Adeline,” a name she associates with her past—and with the last time anyone was physically capable of uttering her name aloud. The stranger is effectively showing Addie that what freedom she does have, she only has because he allows her to have it. Just as men govern Addie’s freedom in society, the stranger governs Addie’s freedom in the metaphysical sphere. This scene also further emphasizes how inhuman the stranger is, despite the humanlike appearance he assumes; the novel repeatedly brings this up, so it seems to be something worth paying attention to as the plot progresses.
Themes
The stranger repeats Addie’s words back to her: “You can have my life when I am done with it. You can have my soul when I don’t want it anymore.” Wasn’t it in the stranger’s best interest, then, to make Addie’s life as miserable as possible, so he could have his reward that much sooner? Now, he urges Addie to surrender her soul to him and end her suffering. Part of Addie longs to give in, but she refuses to be the stranger’s victim. The stranger scowls, then he vanishes.
Addie makes one thing clear in this scene: she’s not going to continue enduring her new, difficult life only because she desires freedom and adventure. She’s also going to endure that hardship because she wants to prove to the stranger that he was wrong about her—that he knows her less well than he thinks he does, and thus has less control over her than he thinks he does.
Themes
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